ka. Landing without a sound,
they crept up within ten yards of the tents, stabbed the sleeping
sentinels to death, and let go such a whiz of arrows and lances at the
tent walls, that three of the Indian hostages inside were killed and
every Russian wounded.

Korovin had not even time to seize his firearms. Cutlass in hand,
followed by four men--all wounded and bleeding like himself--he dashed
out, slashed two savages to death, and scattered the rest at the sword
point. A shower of spears was the Indians' answer to this. Wounded
anew, the five Russians could scarcely drag themselves back to the tent
where by this time the others had seized the firearms.

All that day and night, a tempest lashed the shore. The stranded ship
fell to pieces like a boat of paper; and the attacking islanders
strewed the provisions to the winds with shrieks of laughter. On the
30th of April, the assailants began firing muskets, which they had
captured from Korovin's massacred hunters; but the shots fell wide of
the mark. Then they brought sulphur from the volcanic caves, and set
fire to the long grass on the windward side of the tents. Again,
Korovin sallied out, drove them off, and extinguished the fire. May,
June, and half July he lay stranded here, waiting for his men to
recover, and when they recovered, setting them to build a boat of skin
and driftwood.

Toward the third week of July, a skin boat twenty-four feet long was
finished. In this were laid the wounded; and the well men took to the
paddles. All {104} night they paddled westward and still westward,
night after night, seeking the third vessel--that of Denis Medvedeff,
who had come with them the year before from Bering Island. On the
tenth day, Russian huts and a stone bath-house were seen on the shore
of a broad inlet. Not a soul was stirring. As Korovin's boat
approached, bits of sail, ships' wreckage, and provisions were seen
scattered on the shore. Fearing the worst, Korovin landed. Signs of a
struggle were on every hand; and in the bath-house, still clothed but
with thongs round their necks as if they had been strangled to death,
lay twenty of Medvedeff's crew. Closer examination showed Medvedeff
himself among the slain. Not a soul was left to tell the story of the
massacre, not a word ever heard about the fate of the others in the
crew. Korovin's last hope was gone. There was no third ship to carry
him home. He was in the very act of ordering his men to